Andrea, I’m truly sorry to hear about your disappointment. I encourage you to request a refund. We’re going to do the best we can and share as much as we can, and that’s not going to be enough for everyone. That’s OK, and I’d much rather have you happy as someone else’s customer than frustrated as ours.
If you understand the uncertainty (e.g. we just don’t have the resources to optimize international fulfillment) and still want to proceed, we’d be delighted to have you as a customer.
Dan,
We can cut a some of the money we need to waste (remember: no profit, twice the VAT), by simply removing the VAT from the delivery slip.
This is perfectly legal: just have someone from your sale, financial or whatever department contact me, and I’ll give all the details to make a proper invoice to my organization.
Then, the delivery slip you will include in the package, won’t need to include the VAT.
Is not the best solution, but it’s still a cut from the price I’ll have to pay to the customs.
Again, you can do that: let’s see if you also want to do it.
I’m so sorry, Andrea-it sounds like you need a level of logistics service that we’re just not staffed to provide you at this point. I wish we could be a great vendor for you right now. We’ll be much better equipped to call and help individual customers with their shipping needs after we’re in full retail distribution. Until then, we can only fulfill the shipping commitments we made, and cannot accommodate any other optimizations. I know it seems like a few minutes, but it actually starts with finding an international logistics expert to be sure we’re complying with the law, then making hundreds of calls to individual customers, then meeting with the shippers to see if they can accommodate… These are things we can do later, but which are not part of our preorder plan, and which would come at the expense of fulfilling the obligations we did make.
As always, say the word and we’ll issue a full refund.
Yes, sure. I could ask for a refund, as it seems that’s the only thing you can say, but I’ve ordered the product at half of its price, plus the additional discounts.
If I cancel the order and order later, when you will be able to properly handle your logistic (if ever), I will have to pay the full price, which will be even worse!
This is a very big fail from you: how could you have thought to send your product overseas, without even considering this sort of issues?
I can’t believe it, really!
I went ahead and finally made my order. Went for the basic, even though I want the filter. I live in Korea and Dan emailed me to tell me that they can’t ship it to an APO here for some reason but it’s also just over 70lb (for the basic model) which is just over the 70lb limit for APO. heartbreaking. Maybe I can order the filter and have the filter shipped separately to the APO?
Anyways. Because of this (over 500$ to ship) I skipped the filter. I’m hoping that by the time my laser finally ships they will have more of the logistics figured out and will have found a way to let me FEDEX it and then refund the extra money.
This is a major expense for me so in some ways I’m glad I’ll be at the end of the list, they should have things worked out by then, hopefully springtime and not August like people have predicted.
Also, I forgot to use a reference link 
Ok, so this page looks kinda old, but I’ll ask anyway.
I live in Vancouver Canada, and am gonna get killed on the import duty. Can I get a refund on the shipping and pick up my Glowforge from you guys directly? When they’re ready, of course. I could make a weekend of it to hang in Seattle for weekend (I love Seattle and would love the excuse). Perhaps I can swing by and check out the Glowforge Lab?
I hope somebody hears this. 
When we send you an email letting you know your Glowforge is ready to ship, you’ll be able to specify a new location. I don’t know that we have a ‘refund and switch countries’ option scoped; we’ll know that just before we start sending those emails.
Holy crap mate, you work like you’re me. I’m nearly 20hours into today. Can’t seen to find any lack of tasks that need doing.
Thanks for the reply. Thanks for the book as well BTW. It was a good read. Had some interesting ideas i haven’t pondered before.
Oh man. I can’t wait for this thing.
Get some rest. I think thats your advice if I recall correctly. Or was it?
Night mate
Very welcome. No rest until we get you all your glowforges. 
I didnt want to push it. 
Thanks
Im in Vancouver too. Thanks for asking the question as I was wondering the same thing.
Maybe we should carpool. 
Hell, I’m up in Edmonton and if it’s going to be the middle of summer I’m tempted to spend a week driving down and back if it saves me a few hundred bucks. 
Even if Glowforge can’t swing it, you might be able to find a friendly Glowforger in Seattle and have your machines shipped there. Or there may even be someone in Bellingham (check the map)? Of course you still need to make back through customs with a vehicle full of huge laser cutters.
A vehicle full of laser cutters? No sir, those are toaster ovens. (Just explain that to customs.) Oh, and the toasters you buy to get the receipts for the purchases, you can send those to Glowforge as gifts. But I don’t know anything about any of that.
If you’re going to drive to the US from Edmonton you may want to consider a nice vacation in Idaho or Montana (Glacier National Park?) I love Seattle, but if you have your glowforge delivered anywhere in Washington state you’ll pay an extra 6.5% in sales tax.
State tax shouldn’t be a factor. The purchase is for “175xxxx Alberta Ltd.”, a non-US corporate entity. (My consulting company; employees: 1)
I’m just there taking delivery of the product on behalf of 175xxxx, as the shipping-receiver. Since I’m neither a resident or operating a registered corporation within Washington state, charging state taxes would be improper because it’s dependent on where the purchase entity is located (as you mention, the delivery address).
That I, an employee, retrieved the item rather than having a courier deliver it is irrelevant since “I” am not the recipient… my corporate entity in Canada is. It’ll get hit with 5% GST upon import into Canada, because Alberta doesn’t have a provincial sales tax, no avoiding that.
But funny you should mention Glacier… last May I drove down to San Francisco and back, intending to stop at Glacier on the way back. I was so tired of driving by then, I skipped it, vowing to return. Might have to do that.
Don’t disagree on the theory. Just not clear where you are going to physically take delivery. They’re not being made at glowforge’s office in Seattle and I vaguely recall an earlier post from dan that the contract manufacturer wouldn’t (or he did not thing they would) allow individual pickup. Plus, unless I missed something, we’re not sure where they are located.
From the perspective of executing a practical plan you either have to request special accommodation or accept that FedEx will be making a delivery to the location you specify. If that location is in Washington state the glowforge sales software is going to charge you tax. It’s possible their software package can accommodate this non-standard situation, I just consider it unlikely.
Oh, I thought they were being shipped out of Seattle offices, not directly from the manufacturer. Agreed, those are all good points. I’m not against paying the delivery fees, but I’d rather that any potential shipping savings go towards material costs.
But really, the sales software is the least of the problems. It would be incredibly horrible software if it didn’t allow you to override taxes and freight charges. I’ve never used any sales software over the last 30 years that hasn’t allowed a person to do so.
Sorry, if you pick it up in Seattle (however that happens), you’ll get charged WA sales tax. Sellers are under no obligation to withhold the sales tax from your purchase price, even if Alberta is one of the few places that is eligible to have it waived.
If you do end up going down to pick it up, you can apply to the state of Washington to have it refunded to you, however.